ARTICLES ABOUT KARBALA BY DATE - PAGE 2

An armored battalion of about 700 soldiers is being dispatched from Kuwait to the Baghdad area to provide additional security during a religious holiday, military officials said Wednesday. The move comes a day after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave a strong hint that American troop levels in Iraq may be increased in coming days, perhaps only slightly and temporarily. Military officials said Wednesday that the reinforcements from the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division will be deployed for about 30 to 45 days during a Shiite holiday that includes pilgrimages to holy sites in Najaf and Karbala.

The Shiite religious bloc leading Iraq's parliamentary elections held talks in Baghdad on Tuesday with Kurdish leaders about who should get the top 12 government jobs, as thousands of Sunni Arabs and secular Shiites protested what they say was a tainted vote. Meanwhile, workers in Karbala uncovered remains believed to be part of a mass grave dating to a 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein.

By Liz Sly, Tribune foreign correspondent. Tribune correspondent Cam Simpson in London and Zaid Sabah in Baghdad contributed to this report | March 1, 2005

In the bloodiest single attack of the insurgency, a suicide bomber Monday killed 115 people by ramming an explosives-packed vehicle into a line of people waiting outside a clinic for medical tests in the predominantly Shiite city of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. About 140 people were injured in the devastating blast, which ripped through a crowded, narrow street in the heart of the city's main market about 9:30 a.m. Iraqi TV footage showed sadly familiar scenes of carnage: baby shoes floating in pools of blood, human remains spattered on the walls of nearby buildings and the twisted, blackened wreckage of vehicles caught up in the blast.

Saddam Hussein met with a lawyer Thursday for the first time since he was captured by U.S. soldiers just over a year ago, Iraqi officials said. Hussein, the former president, spoke with the lawyer, an unidentified Iraqi, for four hours at the military compound where he and other members of his deposed government are in U.S. custody awaiting trial on war crimes, genocide, torture and other charges, the officials said. The trial of Hussein is not expected to begin until late next year.

The U.S. military advance into Iraq's holy city of Najaf aroused anger and frustration among Shiite Muslims abroad Thursday, with many blaming the United States for what they described as an intentional and brutal humiliation that would provoke outrage if holy shrines were destroyed. In neighboring Iran, where the majority of the population is Shiite, the Foreign Ministry denounced the massing of U.S. forces in and around Najaf as "inhumane and horrifying." Televised images of smoking ruins and damage in a large cemetery near the Najaf shrine have made many Shiites dismissive of American pledges to respect holy sites.

U.S. forces killed at least 18 fighters loyal to rebel Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr on Friday as deadly battles raged around two important Muslim shrines in the holy city of Karbala, U.S. military officials said. Insurgents carrying rocket-propelled grenades fired on U.S. troops near a base outside the city, one of several cities in Iraq's Shiite south where fighting has raged for weeks between Sadr's al-Mahdi Army and U.S. troops. Soldiers responded with AC-130 gunships. U.S. forces arrested one of Sadr's top aides and his bodyguard and killed the driver of their car as it traveled between Najaf and Kufa, a Sadr spokesman said.

Rebel Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr said Wednesday that he was prepared for martyrdom and wouldn't disband his militia unless under instructions from religious authorities as he stepped up his verbal offensive against the U.S.-led occupation. In the besieged holy city of Najaf, Sadr vowed to press on in his six-week confrontation with U.S. troops. The cleric is wanted on charges stemming from the murder of a religious rival last year, and his militia poses one of the gravest challenges yet to Iraq's security before the scheduled June 30 hand-over of limited political control to the Iraqi people.

U.S. forces battled Moqtada Sadr's militia at a mosque in the holy city of Karbala on Tuesday as leaders in Najaf sought to broker an agreement between the rebel cleric and the military. Hundreds of American soldiers were within a third of a mile of two of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, the shrines of the martyrs Hussein and Abbas, as they attacked the Mukhaiyam mosque. Soldiers stormed the mosque, chasing insurgents out into a hotel and alley. And a weapons cache detonated when a building behind the mosque was fired on. The number of casualties could not be immediately determined.

U.S. troops killed 16 insurgents and destroyed the headquarters of rebel Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr in running battles with guerrillas in the capital's Sadr City slum, military officials said Monday. On a day of violence across the country, the military announced the deaths of three U.S. soldiers, and gunmen killed two foreign nationals and an Iraqi working for a reconstruction company in Kirkuk. Also, oil industry officials said that Iraq's oil output was severely curtailed by a weekend bombing by insurgents in the south of the country.

In the first significant push against rebel Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, U.S. troops on Wednesday launched a major assault against his al-Mahdi militia in the holy city of Karbala and another city in southern Iraq. Ten militiamen were killed during intense fighting that erupted when U.S. troops stormed a hotel and other buildings in Karbala, a military spokesman said. Five Iraqis were killed by U.S. tank fire after they were found smuggling weapons in a van in the nearby city of Kufa.